Friday, 10 July 2009

The aid system is not responding to the causes of child mortality in a targeted manner. The Millennium Development Goal to reduce by two-thirds the number of children dying before their fifth birthday by 2015 is seriously off-track. In Sub-Saharan Africa, on current trends, it will not be met until 2064.

and notes that:

The World Health Organization estimates that 28% of under-five deaths are attributable to poor sanitation and unsafe water.

Clearly much more needs to be done! But is this lack of action on MDG4 (not to mention the MDG WatSan targets) because the donors are spending too much on AIDS? Well, Mr Rajalakshmi (who is a correspondent for the Indian newsmagazine Frontline) thinks so – see Is HIV/AIDS skewing the priorities of the public health system? (dated January 2008) (and thanks to Dave Trouba of WSSCC for bringing this to my attention).

Mr Rajalakshmi may be right as far as India is concerned − he writes:

The government does not seem to be terribly bothered about the continuing burden of other communicable diseases. According to the WHO, approximately 988,000 Indians die of all causes, annually. About 462,000 of these die from communicable, maternal and perinatal diseases. An estimated 34,000 die of AIDS according to this report (though the source of this estimate may be debated). Respiratory infections account for 107,000 deaths. Take the example of tuberculosis. India ranks first among the 22 high-burden countries in the world, with some 364,000 deaths annually. According to the WHO’s Global TB Report 2006, there were 1.8 million new cases in 2004, of which 5% were in people with HIV and 2.4% were multi-drug resistant (MDR) requiring very expensive treatment. The government’s revised national tuberculosis programme does not provide free treatment for MDR TB. More than one-fifth of the burden of communicable disease is related to the basic problem of clean drinking water. Look at the impact of diarrhoea which, the WHO estimates, killed an estimated 700,000 Indians in 1999 – over 1,600 deaths each day.

Such diseases are mainly an outcome of an inaccessible and unaffordable health system and a debilitating socio-economic environment. But these diseases are not on the international radar of any funding agency or government. There were 1.8 million reported cases of malaria last year. And this is an underestimation, as blood tests were carried out on less than 10% of people with suspected malaria. It is estimated that four people die due to malaria every day in the country. There are also the scourges of Japanese encephalitis, chikungunya and dengue. As many as 1,000 children died from Japanese encephalitis in Uttar Pradesh in two years, but these figures did not make the headlines or grab national or international attention in the way HIV/AIDS does. [Chikungunya? Similar to dengue − some details here.]

Saturday, 4 July 2009

I’ve been catching up with last month’s issues of The Economist and a few good stories caught my eye:

(a) Waste disposal in Colombia: Muck and brass plates: Colombia’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the tens of thousands of wastepickers who scratch out a living on Cali’s solid waste dumps be officially recognised as entrepreneurs and, as such, should be given the chance to bid for the city’s waste management contract. A brilliant blow for the poor. Let’s hope a local NGO steps in and helps them prepare their bid (they’ll need help, and soon, as they’re illiterate).

(b) India’s cheap housing boom: The nano home: ultra-low-cost minimal housing is being provided by property developers. Not before time as India needs at least 25 million more homes in urban areas. And what sanitation system is envisaged?

(e) Cleaning the Great Lakes: Swimming with E. coli: A USD 26 billion programme to clean up the Great Lakes may soon get underway. The Great Lakes have major problems: “Sewage systems continue to overflow, forcing many beaches to close. Levels of some toxins in fish have declined, but others pose new risks. Atlantic freighters still bring in foreign species − there are now 185”. But the benefits could amount to at least USD 80 billion. A lesson here for the developing world?

About Me

I'm an emeritus professor of civil engineering at the University of Leeds in England. I've been working on low-cost sanitation in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and also on low-cost wastewater treatment and reuse. I was a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1970-73 and then a senior lecturer at the University of Dundee, Scotland, 1974-79 before moving to Leeds in late 1979. I was a visiting professor of sanitary engineering at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba in Campina Grande, northeast Brazil, during 1976-95, and since 1996 I have been a visiting professor of environmental engineering at the Instituto Cinara, Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia.